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Winnipeg Jets give humbled Edmonton Oilers bumpy ride at Rogers Place

If the Oilers thought the slumping and reeling Jets were just the pushover they needed to get their house back in order, they were wrong

Mathieu Perreault of the Winnipeg Jets is foiled by Edmonton Oilers' goaltender Cam Talbot from close in during NHL action Monday night at Rogers Place. The Jets were 5-2 winners.Codie McLachlan/Getty Images

If the Edmonton Oilers thought the slumping and reeling Winnipeg Jets were just the pushover they needed to get their house back in order, they were wrong.

Their house looks a bit of a mess Monday after a humbling 5-2 loss to a previously winless team that gave up 13 goals in first two games of the season.

The Jets built 2-0 and 4-2 leads in dropping the hometown Oilers to 1-2 on a season that was supposed to be a quick and brilliant ascent to the top.

It’s not just that they lost, but how they lost that really bothers the head coach. Getting out-hustled at home shouldn’t be acceptable.

“The big concern is where we are with the mental state,” said Todd McLellan. “We’re not near competitive enough. We’re not outworking teams. It feels like it in moments of the game, but consistently from minutes one to 60 the last two games we haven’t come close to outworking teams.

The Jets top line lit up Edmonton’s and that’s a big part of where the game went south.

“It starts with your star players,” said McLellan, who broke up the Connor McDavid, Leon Draisialtl line in the third period after they were on for three goals against in the first 40 minutes. “Your stars have to be superstars every night on both sides of the puck. We didn’t quite get it done with our star players.”

It’s too early to panic, but it’s not too early to notice the Oilers need to tighten up in a lot of areas if they’re going to put a stop to the losing. For the second straight game their defensive zone coverage wasn’t nearly good enough and for the second night in a row the goalie at the other end of the ice looked all world.

“As it’s not going in in the first 10 minutes we begin to cheat, we begin to loop, we want to build speed when we should be checking,” said McLellan. “The other team that’s disciplined and plays a well structured game takes advantage of it. We’ve seen it two nights in a row.”

And the defensive side of the puck is forced to withstand much more than it can handle right now.

“We were giving up breakaways and odd man rushes,” said Milan Lucic. “When you do that you’re going to end up on the losing side more often than not.

“We get a couple of days to regroup and go over what we need to do better, because the last two games, the chances that we’ve given up is definitely unacceptable.”

McLellan believes he has the personnel on defence to ride this out, but just isn’t seeing it in action yet.

“My belief is the six or seven we have here are good enough, they’re just not playing well enough.”

It was a quick start for the Oilers, who got an early power play and found themselves outshooting Winnipeg 10-2 by the seven minute mark.

But they still trailed 1-0 when Mark Scheifele batted down a pass from defenceman Dmitry Kulikov in the slot and snapped it into the net before Cam Talbot had a chance to get set. And with the shots 12-4 Edmonton, it was 1-0 Winnipeg.

Winnipeg went up 2-0 when the Oilers let Kulikov walk to the top of the faceoff circle and whip a wrist shot past Talbot, who wasn’t screened on the play at 16:27.

The Oilers kept it coming, though, and finally broke through in quick and dramatic fashion with two goals 40 seconds apart midway through the second period, one from Draisiatl and one from Ryan Nugent-Hopkins on the very next shift. After no goals on 22 shots in the first period, they had two on six in the second.

But the Jets appeared the more desperate of the two teams and showed it late in the second by restoring their two-goal lead on back-to-back goals from Nik Ehlers at 16:49 and 17:57.

The Jets outshot Edmonton 19-7 in the second.

Ehlers completed the hat trick at 18:46 of the third.

“There wasn’t enough,” said centre Mark Letestu. “Not enough players, not enough push. It’s a problem. It’s been two games that way. But we have to fix it. Soon. These are important points, just like the ones at the end of the year. We’ll fix it, no doubt.”

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